The explosion of network connected devices has led to an increased use of certain protocols. ZigBee Cluster Library over IP (ZCLIP), also referred to as DotDot, is a new standard intended to improve the security and universal connectivity of the Internet of Things (IoT). As the adoption of DotDot continues to grow, there will be an entire set of infrastructure developed to allow communication between DotDot devices and the cloud, which includes PCs, smart phones, cloud servers and other devices. DotDot is an application layer which may be utilized with different network layers. One such network layer is known as Internet Protocol (IP). Further, there are two versions of Internet Protocol; version 4 (IPv4) and version 6 (IPv6).
However, there are already millions of devices that communicate wirelessly using other protocols, such as ZigBee®, BlueTooth, BLE and others. For example, ZIGBEE® is now commonly used in many applications, including utility meters, lighting systems and the like.
There is a need to find a way in which the currently existing devices, which do not utilize the DotDot protocol, can be included as part of an existing network. Obviously, retrofitting all of these existing devices with new software and possibly new hardware is not feasible for many reasons.
Therefore, there needs to be a system and method that allows these legacy devices to operate on a DotDot network without requiring any changes to these legacy devices. However, there are now security requirements associated with the DotDot protocol that complicate this objective. Further, it would be beneficial if there were a system and method to discover the existence of these legacy devices.